Goodnight.
A portrait of Steve Soroka.
Starring Steve Soroka.
Written and Directed by Chris Roberti
Shot and Edited by Anthony Mascorro
with
Paul Wielunski, Anna Martemucci, Julie Dulude, Danny Manley, Leslie Collins
and last and least
Jeff Seal
How I Started My Beatles Collection
Posted by burnshere
I bought all my first Beatles albums in an attempt to find “I Am The Walrus”; that is, because I consistently bought the wrong album, one without The Walrus on it, I ended up with my Beatles collection. (This was before AllMusic discographies.)
I first heard The Walrus one afternoon on a Milwaukee FM station. I was frozen in hyperactive stillness, like a vague, vibrating shape of multicolored particles in the transporter room of the Enterprise. The mad, metallic clutter of the whole production, the hypnotic cadence and nonsense of the lyrics, the venom, the humor—the artist John Lennon had entered my life at that moment. I had no idea what I’d just heard.
I asked a friend of mine at school who had older brothers and sisters who smoked pot and had every album ever recorded. I said, “It was…I think…’I am the eggman’ and ‘goo goo ca chew’ and the words rhymed, but… and there were violins…”
He said, “Yeah, it’s called The Walrus. That’s the Beatles.”
“No. No it wasn’t the Beatles,” I said. (I was thinking “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” “Ticket to Ride,” etc.)
“Fuck you, it is.”
“Bullshit, are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“What album is it on?”
“…Hey Jude, I think.”
And that’s how it went. I bought an old American release, Hey Jude, and for months I had my headphones on. Rain, Paperback Writer, Ballad of John and Yoko, Hey Jude, Lady Madonna… no Walrus.
After a while, I asked the guy at the record store which Beatles album had The Walrus on it.
He puffed, “That’s Sergeant Pepper’s.”
He looked like an expert, a jeweler even.
“OK,” I said.
More months on the headphones. Fixing a Hole, Day in the Life, With a Little Help from My Friends, Good Morning, Within Without You… no Walrus.
Before long I was an established post-‘66 Beatles fan, and just about the only album missing from my collection was Magical Mystery Tour. Now, Christmas was coming up and I had to get my brother a present. Since he’d showed almost no interest in the Beatles, I figured Magical Mystery Tour was the perfect gift. I’d even listen to it for him.
He opened it Christmas morning and right away just looked pissed off. He knew what I’d done. So did my mom and she shot me a look.
“What tunes are on it?” I asked.
He grumbled, “Fool on the Hill, Strawberry Fields, Flying, Penny Lane, I Am The Walrus…”
Whoa… I didn’t know that. Please, God. He won’t like it…
Well, he liked it. Of course. It’s a great album. And he let me listen to it. And it remained definitely in his possession. And he grew up. And he went to college. And you know, so did I. And we finished college and left the area more or less for good. And we’d visit home. And I couldn’t help but notice that Magical Mystery Tour, unlike the rest of the Beatles albums, just stayed in our old house. Never left with its owner.
So I stole it, anyway.
It’s in Brooklyn. My brother is in Colorado. He has top-secret security clearance, a couple of black belts, and works in cyber-security.
As far as I know, he does not know where his Magical Mystery Tour album is.
I am the Eggman.
The Live Album Returns Saturday, August 27th @ 7pm to The PIT
Posted by swiftandabundant
Yes Yes Ya’ll! The Live Album returns this upcoming Saturday, August 27th @ 7pm to The People’s Improv Theater! We’ll be rocking it out in the basement space. Our last show used Pink Floyd’s A Saucerful of Secrets and it was EPIC! Which classic album from the history of rock and roll will be chosen this time around? The first ten audience members will get a free drink with their admission. Can’t beat that!
The Live Album
Saturday, August 27th, @ 7pm
The Peoples Improv Theater
123 East 24th Street btwn Park and Lex
Admission: $5
The Tape Years…
Posted by swiftandabundant
The first tape I owned was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” I played this tape constantly until one day my father, in a fit of rage, grabbed my mini tape player and threw it onto the roof of our house. My father, who never raised his hand at me and rarely got angry, must have really been sick of Michael Jackson. I screamed so loud when he threw the tape player and it shattered, that he had to buy me a new one (being the youngest child can be pretty sweet). The tape survived, much to my father’s dismay.
It wasn’t until the summer after 4th grade that my tape collection really began to grow. Tower Records had just opened in Nashville. I would spend a lot of the next ten plus years of my life at Tower Records. All that summer they had a massive 6 dollar tape sale and I had an allowance of 6 dollars/wk. You do the math.
Between 4th and 8th grade I must have bought up to 200 tapes or more. Its hard to say. Some I would resell at The Great Escape (a used music and memorabilia store that I also spent an inordinate amount of time in growing up). I had pretty much every hair metal band you could imagine and a large portion of popular rock/pop/rap music from 1989 to 1992 I owned. I listened to “Hysteria” by Def Leppard so much that the writing wore off the tape and you didn’t know what side you were putting in. Same with “Appetite For Destruction.”
I also made tapes. I had the dual tape recorder and would borrow tapes from my friends and brother to record. I’d make mix tapes and I’d record songs off the radio too. I played video games and had a decent collection but I was really only into video games for about 2 years. I was never that into comic books or Stephen King or science fiction. I played sports and liked watching it (especially basketball) but was never great at it and, therefore, could only be so into it. But I loved music and I loved tapes.
In 8th grade I got a Discman for Christmas and began buying CDS. The golden age of my tape days had passed. It had gotten me from “Thriller” to “Nevermind.” In time my CD collection would grow to rival and then far surpass my tape collection. I still bought tapes though. Even though the golden age of tapes had passed for me, I entered a late, declining empire phase with tapes.
In high school I often would buy a tape if I didn’t have enough money for the CD or if I thought the band might suck but liked one song. Or if I didn’t know the band at all. And tape singles I’d buy still, some ironically, others not. I still used blank tapes to record CDS I borrowed from friends.
When I turned 16 I drove my Dad’s car and it only had a tape player. So I made mix tapes from my CDs. And over the years I made some amazing mix tapes. I’d buy the 120 minute long tapes so you could have 2 full albums on a tape. The greatest 2 album tape I ever had was A Tribe Called Quest tape I had that had “The Low End Theory” and “Beats, Rhymes, and Life” on ONE FREAKING TAPE! That tape I listened to constantly for a solid 5 years.
But even so, by the end of high school I had gotten rid of almost all of my tapes from the early 4th to 8th grade golden age. By the time I got to college, my tape collecting and listening was spotty at best. I’d make a mix tape of songs for a girl or would put together one for a road trip. A friend of mine DJ’d in college and he’d make these tapes for friends that I’d listen to those in the car.
The last tape I remember buying was a Rawkus Records Hip Hop compilation album in 2000 at Tower Records. I was home in Nashville from college, 2nd semester my senior year, and about to graduate. My parents were getting ready to move away from Nashville and retire in Montana. In a few months I would be living in New York. The tape section had dwindled. I could have bought the CD but I now think I must have bought that tape as a final salute to my childhood. Tower Records would close a few years later.
After that it was strictly CDs. Nowadays its MP3’s and Pandora. There isn’t a Tower Records in Nashville or New York City. You can’t hang out at Virgin Megastore in Times Square and kill time looking at music. You can carry thousands of songs in a device that’s way smaller than a tape. You can go online and instantly listen to music you’ve never heard before, from any country or time period, of any genre. I listen to more music, more different types of music than I ever did growing up. Still, I loved those tapes (and those CDs too). I loved going to the store to buy music.
I bought a little portable boom box with a cd player a few years back to use for rehearsal purposes, the beach, etc. Even though I had my computer with all my music hooked up to nice speakers, I sometimes would play a CD from the boombox when I did dishes or cleaned the apartment. It also had a tape player. At the time I lived with my brother and he had in the closet a bag full of a bunch of his old tapes. But I never really pulled them out. When we moved out of our apartment a few years back, he let me have the bag of tapes. After I moved into my own place, one night I pulled the boom box out along with the bag of tapes.
Most of them were jazz tapes. My brother love jazz when he was in college. There were some classic rock tapes from back in his day that I was psyched to find. And then there was one of my old tapes. Appetite for Destruction. My brother had saved it. Probably my favorite tape from the golden age. Sure enough the writing was worn off. I rewound and pressed play. Welcome to the Jungle started up. I had chosen the right side.
The Clientele- Suburban Light
Posted by deesauce
I tend to remember times of my life better when an album is introduced into my life and listened to repeatedly so that time period is saturated with that sound and the time and the record cannot be separated. This tends to be easier and more successful in the autumn and winter. ”Suburban Light” by The Clientele was introduced into my life in late 2005- early 2006. I can’t quite remember how or why I first found out about it. What it encapsulates for me is the feeling of comfortable autumnal isolation, happy wet greyness, and an impossible crush I had on a keyboard player who was recording an album in upstate New York. I think my liking him was only strengthened by this record, especially the second song “Rain”. After I met this guy, I started taking very long walks through state parks because I felt like it was somehow therapeutic in a Regency England kind of way. All that did was make the romanticism take on a more central role as I walked through the orange and purple leaves with the smell of woodsmoke on the air. He had gone back to California, a state that this record would probably be allergic to, and we hadn’t even kissed. This record brings back that ribcage squeezing, gut yanking feeling of unrequited crush that you might never see again, and in a way you hope you never do, so that your feelings can live up to a record as good as this one.
Welcome to “The Live Album” Blog
Posted by swiftandabundant
Welcome to “The Live Album” blog. What is “The Live Album” and why do we have a blog?
“The Live Album” is an improv show at The Peoples Improv Theater featuring a consortium of improvisers and performers. Each show we take a classic rock/pop album chosen by the audience and use that album as the soundtrack to our fully improvised show. Rock and Roll, Comedy and Improv collide in one awesome, mind blowing show. Our sets are super physical, organic, and experimental. But above all, they embody the spirit of rock and roll. Its a live action music video right before your very eyes.
This blog will feature postings and musings about music, comedy and improv as well as reviews of our shows, photos and videos from our performances. Check in periodically for the latest news about “The Live Album.”
Our next show is Saturday, August 27th @ 7pm at The PIT Underground.
A night of live improv to an entire album of your choosing.
